206 FIELD, FOREST AND FARM 



will find quite enough to live on, its tastes not being 

 the same as the cereal's. 



' ' Thus we have two successive crops for one coat- 

 ing of manure: we have sacks of potatoes with no 

 additional outlay in fertilizer. Is that all? Not 

 yet. After the wheat and the potatoes there is, to be 

 sure, but meager nourishment left in the upper layer 

 of the soil; but in the lower layers there remains 

 the part of the fertilizer that the rain has washed 

 down and dissolved and that the short roots of the 

 preceding crops could not reach. To utilize this un- 

 derlying matter and bring it up again to the sur- 

 face in the form of forage let us now sow a plant 

 with vigorous roots, such as clover, sainfoin, or, 

 still better, lucerne, which will penetrate deeper. 

 And so we get our third crop. 



"After clover we can try a fourth crop, of a differ- 

 ent kind ; but it is evident that as the guests succeed 

 one another at the same table the remnants become 

 more and more scanty and difficult to utilize. Ac- 

 cordingly we must choose a hardy plant and one that 

 is content with little. Finally a time will come, and 

 at no very distant date, when the board will be bare : 

 the coating of manure will have given up its last 

 particle of nutritious matter. Then the table must 

 be garnished afresh, the field fertilized anew before 

 beginning again with the same crops or attempting 

 others. Let us demand no more. You understand, 

 my young friends, that in order to utilize to the ut- 

 most this precious substance that gives us every 

 kind of food, such as bread, vegetables, forage, meat, 



